Corporate information technologies are built on enterprise computing environments. These environments typically consist of localized intranetworks of computer systems and resources internal to the organization and geographically distributed internetworks, including the Internet. The intranetworks make legacy databases and information resources available for controlled access and data exchange. The internetworks enable internal users to access remote data repositories and computational resources and allow outside users to access select internal resources for completing limited transactions or data transfer.
Unfortunately, enterprise computing environments are also susceptible to security compromise. A minority of surreptitious users routinely abuse and violate computer interconnectivity by disrupting information processing, defeating security measures and intruding into private computer resources without authorization. Such “hackers” pose an ongoing concern for security administrators charged with safeguarding data integrity and computer security within an enterprise computing environment.
Current tools for administering security applications are lacking and generally incapable of responding quickly enough to avoid wide-spread computer virus infections. The severity of the problem was graphically illustrated by the recent “Love Bug” and “Anna Kournikova” macro virus attacks in May 2000 and February 2001, respectively. The “Love Bug” virus was extremely devastating, saturating email systems worldwide and causing an estimated tens of millions of dollars worth of damage. These examples illustrating the alarming speed of computer virus infection rates underscore the importance of fielding up-to-date computer security applications to every client operating in an enterprise computing environment. As well, updates and patches must be applied as quickly as possible to maximize anti-computer virus protection.
The fielding and installation of security applications generally fall into three categories. The first category employs the manual installation of security applications, using the physical or electronic transfer of installation, configuration, update and patching files onto target clients, one client at a time. This process is time-consuming and offers little opportunity for efficient concurrent installation. The time required and complexity of administration increases with the number of machines and variations between configurations.
The second category employs “pull” installations. This approach is client-based, whereby each client will initiate the copying of security application files from a centralized server responsive to a periodic schedule or user command. The downloaded files are executed and the new configuration takes effect, generally upon system reboot.
The third category employs a centralized administration console, such as provided by the Systems Management Server, licensed by Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash. The security administrator initiates the installation of security or other types of applications onto individual clients from a centralized server-based console. However, this approach requires a specific server configuration and can only be performed on the proprietary administrator's console.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach to provide rapid and highly concurrent installation, configuration, updating, and patching of remote security and non-security applications operating on individual clients. Preferably, such an approach would be centrally controlled with decentralized operation and include a Web-based interface for a simplified user experience.